


One Evening In Summer

by bendingwind



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-10
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:30:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Melody is stubborn, Rory is a pushover, and bicycles are cool.</p><p>For the <a href="http://spoiler-song.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://spoiler-song.livejournal.com/"><b>spoiler_song</b></a> ficathon, prompt by <a href="http://spaciireth.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://spaciireth.livejournal.com/"><b>spaciireth</b></a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Evening In Summer

“Melody, you were doing just fine without the training wheels,” Rory sighs, picking her up off the ground. She scowls at him.

“Dad, I don’t _like_ riding the bicycle. Why can’t you just keep driving me to school?”

“School starts an hour later next year, beautiful, you know I have to be at work before then.”

“Then Mum can drive me,” she says, stubbornly. Rory sighs. Of all the things she had to have inherited from Amy…

“We only have one car,” he points out, reasonably. She pouts.

“Well, I don’t want to ride a bike. Anyway, I have the whole summer to learn, I don’t see why I have to do this right now.”

“Alright,” he says, because he knows the look on her face entirely too well. She won’t be learning anything else this evening. He takes the handles of the bike from her and follows her back to their front lawn. Amy and the Doctor are sitting on the porch, laughing over something.

“You let her stop already, didn’t you?” Amy asks when they draw closer, scoffing fondly, “Rory, you’re such a _pushover.”_

He shrugs as Melody gleefully bounds over and squeezes herself in between her mother and the Doctor.

“You said you were going to Mars the last time you visited,” she says, beaming up at him, “You have to tell me about it!”

“Oh, well, erm…” the Doctor says, looking panicked for a second. “I…”

Rory cuts in. “We talked about this, Mels. Sometimes the Doctor won’t remember what he said to you the last time because of time travel. Why don’t you let him pick a story to tell you?”

“You _should_ be learning to ride your bike,” Amy points out, frowning at Melody.

“Muuuum,” Melody groans. She looks to the Doctor for rescue, as she so often does.

“You’re learning to ride a bicycle?” he asks excitedly, leaning down toward her. “I love bicycles, bicycles are cool! Can I have a go?”

“Er, Doctor, I don’t think you’ll fit.” Rory stares at the bike, analyzing it for any possible way the small pink contraption could support the Doctor’s lanky frame.

“Not to worry, I’m sure I’ve got one somewhere in the TARDIS! I saw it just the other day, as a matter of fact…” Without another word, the Doctor plunges into the TARDIS in search of a bicycle. Melody starts to follow him, but Amy lays a hand on her shoulder.

“You know you’re not allowed in the TARDIS until you’re seventeen, Melody.” Melody’s bottom lip juts out rather farther than a non-parent would have believed possible, and she sits back down on the porch with a loud thump and folds her arms tightly across her chest.

“I don’t see why not,” she says, as they wait for the Doctor to reemerge. “I bet I’d be loads better at getting places on time than the Doctor is.”

“I’m sure you would, Mels,” Amy says, patting her on the head absently. Melody looks ready to bite her—again—and so Rory quickly intervenes.

“You know, you ought to make up stories to tell the Doctor,” he says, crouching down so that he’s closer to eye-level with both his wife and his daughter. “I bet he gets tired of telling all the stories sometimes.”

Melody tilts her head, and he can tell that he’s captured her interest. “What kind of stories?” she asks.

“Well, you could maybe make some up about you and the Doctor traveling in the TARDIS—” he begins, but the rest of his explanation is interrupted when the Doctor returns. Kind of like his life, really.

“I found it,” the Doctor says, beaming proudly and holding the handlebars of what might, somewhere underneath the strange contraption of spikes and ropes and paperclips that seems to have grown around it, have once been a bicycle. “I seem to have used it as the foundation for a Mechanized Neural Relay System, but I’m sure I can get it back into working order presently.” He bends over and fiddles with the device, and the Pond family watches with bemusement. Melody gets up to have a closer look.

“The paperclips conduct electricity like the connections between brain cells, right?” she asks, leaning in. The Doctor looks surprised for a moment, and then pleased.

“Exactly, Melody,” he says, tapping her lightly on the nose. It takes him a few minutes, and a few more prodding, too-insightful questions from Melody, but he finally gets the bicycle back into working order.

“Race you,” he says to Melody as soon as he’s declared it’s safe to ride, bounding up. Before Rory or Amy can even consider protesting, he’s leapt onto the bike and taken off at a comfortable cruise.

“Not fair!” Melody screeches, and before he can quite catch on to what’s happening she’s grabbed her own bike from Rory’s hands and taken off after the Doctor. Within moments, they’re out of sight over the hill.

“I knew she could ride it if she’d just try,” Amy says, and he can hear the laughter in her voice.

“She’s so stubborn, like _someone_ else I know,” he says, sitting down beside her and tickling her ribcage lightly. She laughs and bats his hands away.

“You like that I’m stubborn,” Amy replied, pressing a quick kiss to his lips, “… when do you think they’ll be back? Only, I really can think of better things for us to be doing if he’s going to keep Mels occupied for a while.”

“Mrs Williams, I thought you’d never ask.”

She laughs and lays her head on his shoulder as even Melody’s indignant screeches of “Cheat!” fade away.

* * *

  



End file.
